It’s not exactly surprising that Kavus Torabi has finally gone solo. There’s too much hopeful, demanding inventiveness in him ever to submit entirely to the dynamics of a group, despite the fact that he’s currently got at least three on the go, most of them with him at the helm – the brassy lysergically-illuminated avant-pop of Knifeworld; the ritual instrumentalism of Guapo, and the cantering countercultural circus of Gong (transferred onto his lanky shoulders, history and all, following the 2015 death of Daevid Allen).

What’s more surprising is the direction he’s chosen for the first records under his own name (the new ‘Solar Divination’ EP and a full upcoming album for later in the year). A darker, more agrarian take on his psychedelic homeground, this time it’s drumless, bassless, hornless – rinsed clear of the capering squirrel energy he’s shown for twenty-odd years, in order to reveal muted, angsty bones. Mostly based around slow, smoky-lunged harmonium stretches and sparse flotsam drags of guitar chording, this is a more foreboding turn of song, haunted by deaths, loss and disintegrations. It’s never mopey or lachrymose, thank goodness (even in Knifeworld or The Monsoon Bassoon, Kavus knew how to undercut joyous tootling with passing shadows without souring the milk) but these new songs are overcast with sombre vulnerability: the gravel-grain in Kavus’ voice welling up from deeper, ghostlier territories than before.

Despite being a couple of decades younger than Kavus, Cosmo Sheldrake has been out on his own for a bit longer. It’s been four-and-a-half years since Cosmo put out anything as part of super-eclectic mongrel troupe Gentle Mystics, but during that time he’s been gently dabbing the release schedules with occasional singles, videos and EPs of his own. Earlier work brought some of the Mystics weird and charming vibe along with it: a homemade-toy, party-in-the-fairy-forest feeling, Cosmo lilting skewed nursery-rhyme verses over softly bouncing weaves of melody. In the videos, he came across as a generous digital troubadour on a set of meandering visitations, playing his lashed-up keyboards-and-tech assemblages for performances in model villages, truck beds, pigsties and fishing boats.

Byronic-looking but Branestawm-minded, Cosmo’s a shed-pop tinkerer and a baffling multi-instrumentalist with a mixed mystical/academic background. Part kid’s entertainer and part hippy-boffin, he has a shamanical nose for the margin between nonsense and connection. More recent efforts (trailing the imminent release of his debut album ‘The Much Much How How and I’) have seen chewier, pacier and poppier songs. The videos, meanwhile, have become an ingenious riot of increasingly theatrical, fantastical and sometimes macabre fabling in which foil monsters swim in canvas seas and giant fluffy headlice run amok. There’s a communal, childlike warmth to what he does: not perhaps a guileless wonder, but a sense of celebration, where fables and singalongs and misadventures become part of the accepted, useful junk with which we build our nests.

Kavus’ upcoming tour is a brief series of simmering April dots around England and Wales; Cosmo’s is a more leisurely, lengthy two-month loop, garlanding the British Isles and western Europe. They’re not sharing any shows, or even any venues. The only time they overlap in any respect is on the 25th of April, when they’re playing different but simultaneous one-man shows a stone’s throw apart in Bristol. It would be nice to think of them looking up midset on that one evening, peering across that city-central loop of the Avon, and nodding to each other. Not necessarily natural comrades but, in their way, parallel leywalkers. Each with a bit of Barrett in the back pocket, each with a peculiar charm of innocence, each with fingertips in the otherworldly and the mythic. The uncontainables…

Kavus’ tour also happens to be a chance to catch an intriguing spread of fellow musicians, reflecting the wide body of musical ideas and affinities he touches upon. While in Margate (squeezed into a former Victorian coach house transformed into the Japanese/Alpine cheese dream of a minature theatre), he lines up with two left-field folk acts: the organ-draped, ridge-walking green-chapel psychedelia of Arch Garrison and the mysterious brand-new “wonk-folk” of Bovril (featuring Tuung’s Mike Lindsay). In Birmingham, the bill sharer is Scaramanga Six songwriter Paul Morricone, providing gutsy acoustic songs of fear and brutality with lashing of dark Yorkshire humour. Paul and Kavus also reunite in York for the Tim Smith fundraiser Evening of Fadeless Splendour, alongside the off-kilter art rock of Redbus Noface and the sarcastic-bastard English songcraft of Stephen Gilchrist (a.k.a. Stephen Evens).

On his Manchester date, Kavus will be supported by Peaks (Ben Forrester, formerly of shouty slacker-punk duo Bad Grammar and Manc math-rock supertrio Gug, now performing “loop-driven emo pop”). In London, it’ll be V Ä L V E – once an avant-garde solo project (full of belches and found sounds, situational scoring and sound-art jokes) for Kavus’ Knifeworld bandmate Chloe Herington, now an increasingly ubiquitous three-woman live trio (evolved and evolving into a warm-hearted feminist/Fluxus/Rock In Opposition massing of harps, bassoon, punk bass and singalong bunker-folk). In Leeds, Kavus plays the quiet support act in a free gig for tintinnabulating Sheffield post-metallers May The Night Bless You With Heavenly Dreams (whose echoing tremstrumental pinings add a little magical shimmy to the usual doleful post-rock astronomy) and Bristolian experimental rockers Madilan (whose songs recall both the angst-shredded psychedelic night-journeys of Oceansize and also, in their spindly electronics and Autotuned vocal musing, post-Oceansize rocktronicists British Theatre).

In contrast, most of Cosmo’s dates are solo – possibly because once he’s unshipped his assorted instruments and gizmos (from euphoniums and banjos to loop pedals and pennywhistles), there’s not much room for anyone else in the dressing room. Nonetheless, support for eight of the European April dates comes from Liverpool-based Norwegian girl trio I See Rivers, who wed their outstanding and eerily resonant Scandinavian vocal harmonies, sunny dispositions and scanty guitar to their own balloon-light, touching folk-pop songs and to heart-thawing covers of Daughter (Medicine), George Ezra (Budapest), and Whitney Houston (‘80s wedding fave I Wanna Dance With Somebody).

For the London album launch for ‘The Much Much How How and I’, Cosmo and I See Rivers are joined by Bunty – “multi-dimensional beat merchant and vocal juggler” Kassia Zermon. Also to be found fronting jazz/junk/folk trio Le Juki, co-fronting dub act Resonators, and co-running Brightonian experimental label Beatabet, Kassia’s run Bunty for years as a loopstation-based “one woman electro-orchestra” bolstered by her multi-instrumentalism and vivid imagination. Parallels with Cosmo are clear (the looping and beatboxing, a life blossoming with social art initiatives and therapeutic work beyond the entertainments) and she guests on one of the ‘Much Much’ tracks (very much an equal passing through, with a cheeky hug and a bit of upstaging), but her own vision is distinct. Giddier, jazzier, less directly English in its whimsy, with input from her Moroccan heritage and from her taste for Andy Kaufman; a slightly more cosmic playbox; imaginary languages; an undiluted Brightonian fabulosity.

Kassia’s last Bunty album, ‘Multimos’, was a pocket-sized multimedia event spanning apps, interactive AV, dream machines, audience choirs and gaming cues. Time and occasion will probably only allow a smidgin of that, this time around, but it’ll be a window onto her explosively colourful world.

Coverage of the complex, perverse and joyful musical work of the sadly incapacitated Tim Smith – whether inside or outside his mothership Cardiacs band – frequently figures in here. It’s good to bring you all more about his continued crossover from cult status to something wider: this time, with news of a conservatory jazz gig in Amsterdam and of the continued afterlife of Spratleys Japs.

“Composers are not necessarily dead. They also do not necessarily write symphonies in D flat minor in a 4/4 time signature.

“Tim Smith, frontman of the British band called Cardiacs, is a great composer who wrote lots of music permeated with energy, humour, beauty, Britishness. By people who only partly open their ears (or their minds for that matter), his music has been defined as being “chaotic”. The opposite is true, however: it is strongly organised music and all one needs to be able to do is count past four (and not forget about prime numbers). This challenging mix of punk, prog rock, orchestral and live electronic music (also known as “pronk”) will be performed by BarmyFiveseveN, a “small big band” ensemble of around fifteen players from the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, armed with live electronic extensions.”

Connector V is part of a monthly series at Steim: regular readers should recognise this particular one as a follow-up to the Smith-covering set by Alex Brajkovic Ensemble at Amsterdam’s Jazz Ensemble Festival back in April, and it does in fact feature most or all of the same players, put together by rebel prog professor Jos Zwaanenburg. No-one seems to have recorded/posted evidence from the last time, so I can’t show you how it went – but as before, I can give you some very loose indications as to how this concert might might turn out by referring you to English Rose Orchestrations’ string quartet version of one of the featured pieces, The Duck And Roger The Horse.

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The following month, Spratleys Japs consolidate the success of their Brighton and London reunion shows over the last couple of years by setting out on a bigger, broader English tour taking in Yorkshire and the West as well as the south east, with a mass of current/former Cardiacs and friends coalescing as support around the tour dates.

Read more about SJ here: in brief, though, they’re a short-lived and swampy alternate-universe pop project (part alien folk maunderings, part glam-punk punch and part spindly antiprog) which Tim put together in the mid-’90s with then-girlfriend/muse Jo Spratley. Now revived by Jo and a collection of Brighton art rockers, they’ve got a second wind and have been rattling through fresh gigs partially in tribute to Tim and partially because the enthralling, infuriating puzzle-box songs have a peculiar life of their own.

As regards the backup, looming raconteur Stephen Evens brings his scowling, sardonic British pop along to the London, Brighton and Bristol shows (possibly with full band in tow for all of them). In a similar vein, Yorkshire dark-melodrama rockers The Scaramanga Six pile in at the Huddersfield date, while the Brighton show also sports vigorous dream poppers Hurtling and noisy art-rock goons Ham Legion (the latter performing their Syd Barrett tribute as “Vegetable Men” (plus another acoustic set from Kavus Torabi, squeezing in time in between fronting Gong, Knifeworld and his radio broadcasts). At Bristol there’s another onetime Cardiacs guitarist, Jon Poole, possibly bringing both solo stuff and one-man versions of his clever-pop work with The Dowling Poole; plus ZOFFF (the reverberant south coast kosmische/deep-psych band featuring Crayola Lectern‘s Chris Anderson and yet another ex-Cardiac six-stringer, Bic Hayes).

As with most Cardiacs-related events, these give you a cross-section of a under-celebrated ongoing British sub-scene; stretching from surprisingly accessible, sharply written latter-day take on Britpop right through to mantric pedal noise and squirts of lysergic space-cadet juice. Here’s a selection of sundries from all concerned:

UPDATE, 18th October – apparently we can also expect a couple of imminent fundraising Cardiacs cover versions from Spratleys Japs and Stephen Evens (Odd Even and Two Bites of Cherry), plus other surprises they’re keeping a little tightlipped about for the moment.

Meanwhile, Cornish psychedelic folkie Emily Jones (another Spratleys friend from previous gigs) has been added to the Brighton concert, which now also features a Torabi/Steve Davis DJ set. Support for the Brixton Windmill show in London is going to be thrashy prog-pop stuntmeisters The Display Team and rapidly rising Windmill favourites Black Midi. Below are a couple of moments from Emily and the ‘Team. (There’s not much more I can give you about Black MIDI. They’re so new that the paint’s hardly dry on them, and their Soundcloud page is still empty; but I did manage to establish that they’re an experimental/instrumental rock five-piece of teenage Croydonians and that they’re “purveyors of the darkest dreamscapes”…)

“Tim Smith‘s previously-unheard composition ‘Pod, my my look my Pod’ (1983) is going to be performed in the Amsterdam Conservatory during the Jazz Ensemble Festival in the Blue Note hall – alongside with two other classic songs by Cardiacs… The ensemble is going to be rather extended, I don’t even remember the exact number of members – around ten or eleven people on stage, so it’s going to be loud! So if you are around in the Netherlands and want to hear ‘Pod…’ for the first time, performed by the wonkiest of students and alumni of the CvA, conducted by prog-rock professor Jos Zwaanenburg – for free – you know where to find us.”

This is taking part as part of the Conservatorium Jazz Ensemble festival, which runs between 3rd and 6th April this year and features performances from many of the Conservatorium’s budding jazz and cross-disciplinary musicians, mostly for free. If you’re interested in the whole festival programme you can get it here, but if you’re specifically hoping to catch the set of Smith pieces then you need to look out for Alex Brajkovic‘s electric/acoustic ensemble performing on the evening of 6th April…

“I got Timfected by my teacher at the Amsterdam Conservatory about two years ago. His name is Jos Zwaanenburg, a prog rock flautist who dedicates a whole class to teaching the music of Frank Zappa and related artists. The year I joined that class he decided to throw in a Cardiacs piece for us to learn (we can say he is a big Patient Zero). It was Jibber And Twitch. I still remember the childish joy of playing something so punky in a respected music institution and how impossible those fast quintuplets seemed to play. (I play the bass and I deeply adore Jim (Smith, Cardiacs bassist) for his elaborate basslines and his ability to endure fierce domestic brutality).

“A few years of vigorous Cardiacs listening passed and I graduated. Fast forward to this November, 2016. Jos writes us an e-mail that he finally got the chance to make his trip to England. A trip he had been organizing for years with the help of a mutual friend. He was about to visit Tim Smith and ask him geeky musical questions! He said that during their e-mailing he had been requested to show what he had been doing with his students, but since all the exam recordings sounded crappy we had to make a new, proper home recording of Jibber And Twitch. I couldn’t have been happier to play it again! We rehearsed and made the new version. (It still sounded very lo-fi, but our heart was in it I’d like to think.)

“So Jos went to England, and yes, he actually met Tim. (He is going to cover the details of that absolutely touching encounter in an article soon, so I’m not going into details about how they communicated or what else happened there. I don’t want to take Jos’ credits.) Only my side of the story. After some friendly drinking and whatnot Jos played our silly little recording to Tim. And the anecdote says he looked impressed and he gave it a thumbs up when the song arrived to a part with overdubbed vocals. Even though I wasn’t there (only in a form of an under-mixed bassline) I’m always going to remember this as the most epic ‘Like’ in my life.

“We also got permission to study and record any of his music, including the ones that have never been recorded. We got all the sheet music we need. That’s what kind of a guy Tim Smith is.”

I’m not sure about which three Cardiacs pieces will be played alongside ‘Pod…’ but from hints dropped in various discussions I wouldn’t be surprised if they included Jibber And Twitch and The Duck And Roger The Horse. Below are Cardiacs performances of each of these, plus the English Rose Orchestrations variant on ‘The Duck…’ showing how the original hectic art/prog/punk piece has yielded a set of contemporary classical variations.

This coming week, dEUS singer Tom Barman and saxophonist Robin Verheyen launch a European tour for their art-rock/narrative-tinged jazz band TaxiWars, taking in the Netherlands, England, France, Germany, Austria and Belgium.

Completed by two of Robin’s fellow New York-based Belgian jazzmen (double bass player Nicolas Thys and rising drummer Antoine Pierre) and partially inspired by Tom’s tendency to immerse himself in old Blue Note and Impulse label records when on dEUS downtime, TaxiWars have a motile smooth/gruff sound. They focus on structures, scenes and subleties rather than solos; taking sparks and smoulders from Charles Mingus, Art Blakey, Max Roach, Pharoah Sanders and Artie Shepp (while, on the pop side, padding after the demi-monde restlessness of Morphine and Prince). The band’s second album, ‘Fever’, came out earlier this month.

For most of the dates the band seem to be playing alone (in jazz-friendly mid-to-late night sets), but some of the gigs feature guest performers in support slots. What’s happening at their two English shows remains a bit of a mystery, even a handful of days beforehand. For the tour debut in Lille, they’re supported by Red, the lo-fi Franco-Americana project by genre-restless experimental musician Olivier Lambin, featuring what he refers to variously and obscurely as “unprivate blues” containing ingredients like “hack analog electro, wooden guitar, the noises of planets and stars.” (On record, much of it sounds like home recordings interpenetrated by eerie and slightly disturbing sonic moods, offsetting the gentleness of the singing with a disreputable, disassociative air. I’ve no idea how he’ll work that kind of grubby magic live…)

Back in Belgium, TaxiWars’ show at Evergem will also feature solo sets from two of Tom Barman’s dEUS colleagues – the band’s early-‘90s guitarist Rudy Trouvé and its current-but-soon to-depart guitarist (and Evil Superstars frontman) Mauro Pawlowski. Rudy promises “an intimate set interrupted by animation… something between classic singer-songwriter action and a ‘70s evening with slides”, while Mauro isn’t promising anything in particular besides “new and old work in a crisp, casual and funny way”. However, the two men (both promiscuously-collaborating Belgian art-music veterans who’ve played together extensively in both Love Substitutes and Kiss My Jazz) are holding out the prospect of a collaborative duet – perhaps in the line of their duet set in Oude Beurs at the start of the month. Tasters from both Rudy and Mauro are below.

Rudy will reappear for three of TaxiWars’ four appearances at Belgium’s multi-town, multi-venue Autumn Falls festival, in which he’s playing support again as part of regular improvising trio Tape Cuts Tape. A collaboration with Lynn Cassiers and Eric Thielemans, they’re now onto their third record of kosmiche-and-dub-inspired drone-grooves, re-wrangled baroque chamber influences, spacious experimental sound-stagings and unexpectedly tender tunefulness.

The first of the Autumn Falls shows (in Brussels) also sees TaxiWars sharing the bill with some serious jazz talent. There’ll be a set from the award-winning young Italian jazz trombonist Gianluca Petrella – since he’s playing solo, expect a set with copious loops, processing and effects. There’ll also be one by Swiss-born/Brooklyn-based pianist, composer and improviser Sylvie Courvoisier, featuring her trio with drummer Kenny Wollesen and bass player Drew Gress (a lineup which, in addition to Sylvie’s prolific work as a leader or co-leader, encompasses work with Sonny Stitt, John Zorn, Cab Calloway, Tim Berne, Jack DeJohnette, Tom Waits, Norah Jones, Bill Frisell and Ellery Eskelin).

There’s a little information about some of the support acts and bill sharers. In London and Brighton, there’ll be sets by what are effectively the house improv bands. At the Horse Improv Club, it’ll be the free array of Adam Bohman (amplified objects), Adrian Northover (sax/electronics), Hutch Demouilpied (trumpet/flute) and Sue Lynch (tenor sax/clarinet). At Safehouse, it’ll be the duo of Gus Garside (double bass and electronics) and drummer/percussionist James Parsons: there’ll also be a performance by The Wildcard Quartet, Safehouse’s usual four-piece of randomly selected names from the Brighton improv community. (For two Wildcard examples, see the murky video clip I’ve trawled up below, plus the rather more viewable one under that…)

At Cheltenham’s Xposed Club, In the Sea will be supported by the piano duo of Mike Adcock and Pete Robson. In Glasgow, they’re part of a three-act show – the other two acts being Glaswegian-Bradfordian exploratory collective Bravest Boat (longstanding guitar duo Stevie Jones and Jer Reid, plus viola player/singer Aby Vulliamy, trombonist George Murray and violinist Rafe Fitzpatrick) and the quixotic, master-of fuzzy-genre voyager Richard Youngs (whose list of collaborators and fellow-sparkers stretches from Jandek to Skullflower and Acid Mothers Temple, and whose work frequently features soft songs with avant-garde interruptions).

Later on in the tour – in the Austrian town of Lafnitztal, close to the Hungarian border – In The Sea will be playing on a bill with the “close, loose” trans-European Trio 876 (featuring Italian avant-jazz percussionist Marcello Magliocchi, Belgian total-voice artist Jean-Michel van Schouwburg and Swiss violin master Matthias Boss). For the latter, expect a quick, febrile and knowing shuffle of everything from structured tunes, mouth sputters, blind charges, yodelling, singing and elements from both “logic and fantasy”: in other words, a full gamut. Belgian double bassist Jean Demey will be guesting, rendering the trio a full quartet for this particular evening – but for original trio action, see below.

Our stalls will stock unique clothing and books, featuring items from various independent designers including Marvin Browne. Quite aptly, BBC Radio 3 broadcaster Kevin Le Gendre, who wrote the article on the last night of the Spitz, will be compering the event.

We still require volunteers to help us during this event – if you are interested, please get in touch!”

“Afro-Palace Live Sessions is proud to present the official UK album release party of Jungle By Night‘s fourth album. ‘The Traveller’. Jungle By Night consists of nine young swinging musicians from Amsterdam with an eclectic musical upbringing, taste, backgrounds and unstoppable eagerness to produce a unique blend of musical styles. Jungle by Night has turned many dance floors into boiler rooms: from Istanbul to Tokyo and from Paris to the North Sea Jazz Festival via Shambala and Glastonbury. No one can withstand their Ethiobreaks, Middle Eastern psych and syncopated Afro-funk.

“Jungle By Night does not set any musical boundaries: the possibilities are infinite. All influences come down to the musical palette of each individual member. They shine a radiating light that can be felt when the band is on stage, and this glow finds its way from their record into your heart like a source of energy that never seems to end. They have been support act for their musical heroes such as Mulatu Astatke, John Legend & the Roots, Ebo Taylor, Fools Gold and Orchestre Poly Rhytmo.”

“Electro-salsa meets free improvisation: led by composer-improviser Andrew Hall, Arcadio have been performing since February and bring together London’s finest improvisers and percussionists to create a nomadic exploration of rhythm and movement. The result is a hypnotic music which blends the fierce energy of salsa and cumbia, the delicate unpredictability of improvisation and the cut of modern synths.

“The members of Arcadio are frequent collaborators and performers across the many music scenes of London. They have performed together with the Balkan/funk big band Mimika, and individual members play in bands of free improvisation (White Flower), pop (Charlie Puth), and even Iranian metal (Ali Azimi). Together, inspired by bandleader Andy Hall’s trips to South America, they perform free-wheeling sets of Latin-influenced groove, building spontaneous layers of acoustic and electronic sound. They get deep into the rhythms, and emerge somewhere on the other side of an hour.

Recording for a possible live album this evening, tenor saxophonist Josephine Davies leads OTree, “a brand new trio featuring the remarkable talents of drummer and percussionist Paul Clarvis (frequently heard with Stan Sulzman, Orquestra Mahatma) and bassist Dave Whitford (regular side-man for Christine Tobin and Bobby Wellins). The chord-less line-up features open and playful compositions with plenty of space for improvisation, as well as some choice classics by the tenor greats John Coltrane and Joe Henderson.”

Ruins (in both their original configuration and their various spinoffs) are among the best-known and most influential of Japanese experimental rock bands, with their complex rhythmic ideas and expression stretching across progressive rock, Rock in Opposition, jazz and punk. Founded in 1985, their stretchy, power-flurried drums-and-voice/bass guitar/nothing else approach has been described as “a palace revolt against the established role of the rhythm section” and set the initial format for any number of loud-bastard bass-and-drums duos. Since 1994 they’ve also run assorted noise-rock and improv collaborations including Ronruins (a romping trio alliance with multi-instrumentalist Ron Anderson) and longstanding hook-ups with Derek Bailey, Kazuhisa Uchihashi and Keiji Haino. Post-2004, Ruins has given way to Ruins-alone: a solo project in both practical and actual terms, with Tatsuya Yoshida (Ruins’ drummer, jabberer, main composer and only consistent member) opting to tour and record solo as a drums-and-tapes act.

Active since 2006, Sax Ruinsis yet another iteration of the Ruins concept – a musical tag team in which Yoshida spars happily with Nagoya-based saxophonist Ryoko Ono of Ryorchestra (an all-round improviser steeped in jazz, rock, funk, rhythm & blues classical and hip hop. Their recordings are “extremely complex with irregular beats, frequent excessive overdubbing, and restructured orchestration. The result sounds like a big band playing progressive jazz hardcore. For live performance of Sax Ruins they make hardcore sound like a huge band by full use of effects, also incorporating improvisation. Their shows unfold as a vehement drama.” For further evidence, see below.

Composer, guitarist and synthesizer player Richard Pinhas has often laboured under the reductive tag of “the French Robert Fripp”. This is unfair to him; he may have begun as an admirer of both Fripp and Brian Eno, but whatever he’s learned from them he took in his own direction. Starting out in the early ‘70s with a Sorbonne philosophy doctorate, a keen interest in speculative science fiction and a brief stint heading the post-Hawkwind psych outfit Schizo, Pinhas went on to lead the second-generation progressive rock band Heldon for four years between 1974 and 1978. Geographically and conceptually, Heldon sat bang in the ‘70s midpoint between the artier end of British prog, the proggier end of British art-pop and the chilly sequenced robo-mantras of German electronics. Initially inspired by King Crimson, Eno and Tangerine Dream, they also shared both musicians and ideas with Magma, and at times squinted over the Atlantic towards Zappa and Utopia: no passive followers, they always brought their own assertive, inquiring spin to the party. (A late ‘90s revival version of the band brought in the psychedelic punk and techno imperatives of the dance movement).

Since Heldon, Pinhas has pursued an ongoing and diverse solo career. It’s taken in collaborations with Scanner, Peter Frohmader, Merzbow, Råd Kjetil Senza Testa, Wolf Eyes and Pascal Fromade, plus assorted words-and music projects involving speculative writers and philosophers such as Maurice Dantec, Philip K. Dick, Gilles Deleuze, Norman Spinrad and Chloe Delaume (these include the cyberpunk-inspired Schizotrope). When performing solo, Pinhas uses a loops-layers-and-textures guitar approach which parallels (and to some ears, surpasses) the densely processed and layered Soundscapes work of his original inspiration Fripp. I guess it’s most likely that he’ll employ this at Corsica Studios on the 12th (although as Tatsuya Yoshida has been another of Pinhas’ collaborators over the years, perhaps you might expect another spontaneous team-up…)

Described by BBC Music Magazine as ‘agile, incisive and impassioned’ violinist Darragh Morgan and pianist Mary Dullea are renowned soloists of new music as well as members of The Fidelio Trio, one of the UK’s leading chamber ensembles. ‘Picking up the Pieces’ explores new and recent repertoire, much of it written for this duo, by a diverse selection of composers. Among the program items, Richard Causton’s ‘Seven States of Rain’ (dedicated to Mary and Darragh) won the first ever British Composers’ Award; while Gerald Barry’s ‘Midday’ receives its world premiere alongside other London premieres from Camden Reeves and Benedict Schlepper-Connolly.

For his fifth solo excursion, former Cardiacs keysmith William D Drake takes us on a serpentine path through the inner regions of ‘Revere Reach’, a part-imagined landscape composed of memory and fantasy. At once heart-felt, hearty and absurd, its heady reveries blend ancient-seeming modal folk melody with an obliquely-slanted rock thrust.

Bill Pritchard is a beloved cult British-born singer/songwriter. You may remember. You may not. He started writing songs for various bands at school but it wasn’t until he spent time in Bordeaux as part of a college degree that his style flourished. He did a weekly show with two friends on the radio station La Vie au Grand Hertz (part of the burgeoning ‘radio libre’ movement) and was introduced to a lot of French artists from Antoine to Taxi Girl. In 2014 Bill released – Trip to the Coast (Tapeste Records). He’s recently resurfaced with a cracking new album, the songs of which are classic Bill Pritchard. Guitar pop, hooky chorus’, melodic ballads and personal everyday lyrics about love, loss, and Stoke-On-Trent.

Our final Bill is Bill Botting – best known as the bass player from Allo Darlin with the encouraging face, or as one half of indie electro wierdos Moustache of Insanity. Bill returned to playing his own music sometime in 2014. What started as a solo act has now grown into a complete band featuring members of Owl and Mouse, Allo Darlin and The Wave Pictures. A 7-inch single out later in the year on the wiaiwya label has a country slant but an indie heart.

On the Saturday evening, Baba Yaga’s Hut is running another gig, much of it apparently based around the noise-and-sludge projects which record at south London’s Dropout Studio in Camberwell. I’ve got to admit that I’m quite ambivalent about the hit-and-miss nature of noise-rock – I suspect that it’s too much of a haven for charlatans, and if I can’t drag out anything interesting to say about the noise they produce bar a slew of reference points, then what am I doing if not reviewing my own boredom? – but I like BYH’s omnivorous, ambitious and sharing attitude as promoters, so I’m happy to boost the signal on this one.

Described variously as raw power, psych-blues, primitive lysergia and threatening backwoods jams, Early Mammal are another Dropout-affiliated Camberwell band. They’re a stoner rock three-piece who’ve drawn further comparisons not just to latterday stoner crews like White Hills or Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats, or to predictable perennial touchstones like Captain Beefheart and Hawkwind parallels; but also to broody Harvest Records psych (Edgar Broughton and the ‘Obscured by Clouds’ Pink Floyd), Irmin Schmidt and (a rare and welcome cite, this) the grand dramatics of Aphrodite’s Child (the late-‘60s Greek prog band which skirted the 1966 Paris riots and served as an unlikely launch pad for both Vangelis and Demis Roussos).

Past incarnations have seen Early Mammal stir in some “Turkish-flavoured synth”, but the current lineup is a power trio of ex-Elks guitarist Rob Herian and 85bear’s Ben Tat and Ben Davis, adding baritone guitar and drone box to the usual guitar/bass/drums array.

I’m less sure about the south London/Dropout associations as regards Casual Sect, who seem to be north-of-the-river people; but, armed with their own hardcore noise-punk, they’ll either clatter away like wind-up toys or belly-sprawl on great bluffs of surly noise. They seem to love both citing and mocking conspiracy theory, so I’ll let them yell away on their own behalf – see below…

Up-to-date info on this gig is here, and tickets are available from here.

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Laura Moody’s captivating cello-and-voice songcraft (which edges along the boundary lines of avant-garde classical, art pop and heart-on-sleeve folk music, while demonstrating a daunting mastery of both vocal and instrument) has been a favourite of mine for a while. On this particular week, she’s performing as part of the Match&Fuse Festival in London on 17th October, which I’d have made more of a noise about had I cottoned on to it earlier. She’ll be following up her London show with a date on 20th October at Leeds College of Music: unfortunately, this concert (which also features a talk) is only for LCM students/staff, but if you happen to be attending the college, grab the chance to go along.

There’ll be more on Laura shortly, as she’s embarking on a brief British tour next month which dovetails quite neatly with some other brief tours I’d like to tie together in a post. Watch this space.

Meanwhile, I might as well provide a quick rundown of the Match&Fuse events. This will be a short and scrappy cut’n’paste’n’link, since I’m honouring my own last-minute pickup (and, to be honest, because I exhausted myself listing out all the details of the Manchester Jazz Festival events earlier in the year).

By the sound of it, though, the festival deserves more attention than I’m providing. Even just on spec, it’s a delightful bursting suitcase of British and European music; much of which consists of various forms of jazz and improvisation, but which also takes in electronica, math rock, accordion-driven Tyrolean folk-rap, vocalese, glam punk, the aforementioned Ms. Moody and what appears to be a huge scratch ensemble closing the events each night. It’s spread over three days including a wild triple event on the Saturday. Tickets are starting to sell out; so if you want to attend, be quick.

Committed to the composers and bands who propel, compel and challenge, Match&Fuse turns it on and ignites the 4th London festival in October. Dissolving barriers between genres and countries, it’s a rare chance to hear a spectrum of sounds from underground European and UK artists. On Saturday 17th October our popular wristband event will give you access to three Dalston venues and about thirteen artists and bands. Strike a match…